Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [41]
“Who is it?” Nevyn snapped. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Owaen, my lord, and not long at all.” The silver dagger captain took a few steps forward. “I—er, well—I wanted a bit of a talk with you.”
“Very well. Come sit down.”
Owaen sat down on the ground about an arm's length away. For a few moments they stared into the fire together. Owaen's face was as expressionless as a mask.
“Ah well,” Owaen said at last. “It's about Branoic.”
“I see. You're surprised that you're sorry he's dead. You thought you'd be glad, but you're not.”
“Just that!” Owaen looked up sharply. “Ye gods, you truly can see into a man's soul, can't you?”
“Only when his feelings are obvious.”
Owaen tried to smile but failed. “He got that wound saving my worthless life. I got cut off at the head of our countercharge, and he came up to pull me out of a mob. Ye gods! I thought he hated me. Why would he do it?”
“You're a silver dagger and the captain,” Nevyn said. “That's reason enough.”
Abruptly Owaen raised one arm and buried his face in the crook, but in a brief moment he lowered it again. His voice shook. “I was thinking about his woman. She's left with no one to protect her, if our prince tires of her, I mean. Do you think I should offer to marry her?”
Nevyn's first impulse, quickly stifled, was to laugh.
“That's an honorable thought,” he said instead. “But she has me and her studies. The prince would know better than to try to send her away from court or some such thing.”
“True spoken.” Owaen smiled, relieved. “I wouldn't have made her much of a husband, anyway. But I felt I should offer.”
It seemed that the prince was worried about Lilli as well. The next morning, when the army was digging trenches to bury its dead, Maryn summoned Nevyn to his side. They escaped the noise and confusion by walking clear of the encampment. Out in the middle of what had once been a field, they could see a pair of men pulling stones off its boundary wall and carrying them out onto the grass.
The prince shaded his eyes with one hand. “That's Maddyn and Owaen. I wonder what they're doing.”
“Building Branoic a cairn, most like,” Nevyn said. “I saw Maddo earlier, and he said that he and a couple of the lads had dug him a proper grave.”
“Oh.” Maryn lowered his hand and looked at him with bleak eyes. “I thought I'd got used to men dying for my sake. I was wrong.”
“Well, Your Highness, this particular death—” Nevyn let his words trail away.
“Indeed. Do you want me to find Lilli some other husband?”
“I don't. I think me the dweomer will give her all the position in court that she'll need.”
Maryn nodded, staring at the ground. “I'm sending messengers back this morning. I tried to write her a letter, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. I don't know why. I felt as if I'd never known how to read and write.”
Nevyn choked back his own words: it's because this death gladdens your secret heart. “Well, you could send a special messenger,” he said instead.
“Good thought. I know! Maddyn. He's still blasted weak from that spoiled pork. We're sending the wounded back to Dun Deverry, and he can join the escort.”
For a moment Nevyn felt struck dumb. The dweomer-cold seemed to freeze his lips and fill his mouth with ice.
Maryn glanced his way and considered him with narrow eyes.
“What's so wrong?”
“My apologies, my liege.” Nevyn had to force out the first few words; then his voice steadied. “That escort? Will it be substantial? I have the oddest feeling that Maddyn and the wounded will be in some sort of danger.”
“I'll double it, then.” Maryn smiled briefly. “I know those odd feelings of yours by now.”
Lilli woke and found her chamber filled with cold grey light. For a moment she lay in bed. Her eyes burned, and her head throbbed with pain. Did I sleep? she wondered. Did I sleep at all? I must have. All at once, she remembered.
“Branno,” she whispered.
Her hot and swollen eyes refused to deliver more tears. She sat up, pushing the blankets back. She had wept for half the night, or so it seemed as she looked back upon it. In